Amazon has recently announced a $50 tablet, is now offering same-day shipping in 14 cities with Prime Now, and is giving more benefits than ever to Amazon Prime members (including six months of free access to The Washington Post).

Why does all this matter to you?

Well, if you want to build a business, you better look at Amazon.

This year, Amazon is well on pace to do over $100 billion in revenue. If it does, it will be the only ecommerce company to hit this milestone.

In the first half of this year, Amazon produced $34.2 billion in sales, a 10.4% growth over the first half of last year, 2014.

To estimate the full-year revenue for 2015, let’s assume that Amazon grows in the second half of the year at the same rate it grew from 2013 to 2014 (the last two full years). Comparing the second half of 2013 to the second half of 2014, Amazon grew a whopping 36%.

If Amazon’s growth for the second half of this year is the same (and it could be more), Amazon’s total revenue for 2015 will come in around $113 billion.

That will represent growth of more than 20% from 2014 to 2015. This pace is HUGE for a company the size of Amazon and highlights the undeniable trend that’s driving Amazon’s incredible growth — people want to buy everything from one place.

I know I don’t want to hunt around on 15 different online stores to buy what I need. I want everything readily accessible, all in one place online that I can easily buy from and move on with my life. And I know a lot of people feel the same way I do. This is why Amazon is on such a relentless growth path, and has been for the past decade.

The most exciting aspect of this growth is what’s happening outside the USA.

Here’s a snapshot of some of Amazon’s international ecommerce platforms and the estimated revenue they’ll produce assuming Amazon hits the calculated $113 billion in 2015:

Germany = 14% ($15.8B)

UK = 10% ($11.3B)

Japan = 9% ($10.2B)

I remember living in France and how horrible shopping online was (including on Amazon.fr). However, that was three and a half years ago and now it’s much better, largely thanks to Amazon’s investment in its international platforms.

There is a gold rush happening internationally.

For the first time ever, shopping online is becoming extremely easy for many countries. Amazon is investing billions of dollars to make sure it’s the leading ecommerce platform in as many countries as possible.

As an entrepreneur, this is incredibly exciting! To encourage people who sell on Amazon to expand their product base to other countries, Amazon has started unifying (combining) multiple seller platforms.

For example, you can now sell on Amazon.com (USA) and Amazon.ca (Canada) all from one Amazon Seller Central account.

You can also sell on all of the European platforms — Amazon.co.uk (UK), Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.it (Italy), Amazon.es (Spain), and Amazon.fr (France) — from one Amazon Seller Central account.

Pretty soon, you’ll likely be able to sell products all over the world through one single, seamlessly operated account.

How’d you like to create a product and see it sold in 10 countries all over the world tomorrow?

That’s what Amazon is doing for ecommerce.

It’s an exciting time to be in this business. This is why on September 29th, we’re releasing a full-blown, hour-long in-depth training video showing you how to build a physical-products business with Amazon.

It’s the most detailed single video we’ve ever released for this business model. It’s going live at 8AM Central on 9/29, so stay tuned. You don’t want to miss it. There’s $100 billion in sales ready for you to grab your piece.

You’ve certainly heard about Linkedin and you know it might be helpful for your business. This video shows you how to set up a great Linkedin profile so that people can find you but more importantly so that you can find prospective customers. Next you will see how to use Linkedin for marketing with some easy methods so that you can know how best to use Linkedin for business.

This is #20 of the Where is Vicki Starfire? series. Each episode is shot in a different location. Please send you guesses as to the location of each one to: contact@vickistarfire.com. If you are the first to guess the correct location, Vicki will send you $10.

Here’s a short video in which I am being interviewed by Mark Wright, one of the co-founders of Rapid Time Networks, a meetup network located mostly in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. http://rapidtimenetworks.com/

I relate how to set up and benefit from the Business Labs Pro system that will produce a residual or passive income for the owner. There are a lot of residual income business ideas these days, but as I point out in this video, the staff of Business Labs Pro have been testing and improving this system for two years now to find a system that will work for everyone – one that produces results in the form of people who bring in sales or a good ROI (return of investment).

Residual income with Business Labs Pro

It works by setting up back links with social media and then by adding content from time to time. All you have to do is follow the video tutorials that are provided in the training. This will work for brick and mortar businesses as well as online ones.

There are many residual income benefits. Most people trade time for money. Even if they like their jobs, they are still set on a schedule. Wouldn’t you rather be making money while you are sleeping or better yet, while you are in Hawaii on a beach? Having a source of residual income is also a good addition to a regular job and it’s not hard to learn this system. Why not try it out?

If you want to know more, just click here and you can start a new chapter in your life.

When learning how to market online or for a brick and mortar business some people learn best by going to a large gathering, a convention or a large workshop. There are lots of gains to such gatherings – finding out what others are doing, discovering new approaches or online inventions, general networking and more importantly hearing what the experts have to say.

Recently in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where I live part of the time there was a 3-day convention entitled, Business for Excellence. The mover and shaker and master extraordinaire of this event was Colin Sprake and here’s some of what he had to say.

I also asked various speakers and participants for their feedback on this convention and what advice they would give to people just starting out in internet marketing. Here are their replies.

Ask the Internet Marketing Experts: Local Experts

There are so many local experts here in Vancouver, but I couldn’t write an article about them without including two more, Dan Lok and Isabelle Mercier. Both are very successful millionaires thanks to the internet. Isabelle can be found at http://leaptv.com and http://leapzonestrategies.com. Recently she spoke at a meeting of Dan Lok’s Vancouver Entrepreneurs Group with the title, “Transform Your Business into a Well-Oiled Machine to Double Your Revenue”. I asked her the same question: her advice for those just beginning in internet marketing. Here is her reply.

Last but not least is Dan Lok (http://danlok.com) another self-made man, one of the new breeds of young recent millionaires. He hosts a bi-weekly meetup group, Vancouver Entrepreneurs Group and also sells his books, videos and courses. Here is a video especially for starting entrepreneurs.

It’s a lot of information but the great advantage to the internet is that unlike TV, you can come back and replay most any time. It’s there when YOU are ready too. Have any comments? Would love to hear from you.

We all know about the online businesses of affiliate marketing (selling someone else’s products) and also network marketing schemes in which the goal is to get as many other people selling your products or the company’s. However, there are a lot of other things that you can do from the comfort of your home that will certainly bring in some instant cash and perhaps some longer term funds too. Here are some creative ways to pay those bills.

1. Get paid to use your mobile phone camera – using various free apps you complete easy tasks, like taking a picture of yourself drinking a Starbucks coffee, taking a picture of a restaurant menu, a sign of a road closure – you get the idea. Here are some companies to contact: Juno Wallet, Gigwalk, CheckPoints, WeReward.

2. Find jobs on Zaarly such as walking a dog, giving guitar lessons with buyers who are looking for these services.

3. Teach English online – Italki.com, openenglish.com, jobs.ispeakuspeak.com, and skypeteachingjobs.com are just a few of the thousands of schools. Getting $20/lesson is typical.

4. Post a job on Fiverr – you will only get $5/job but you can suggest almost anything, taking a picture of yourself holding a sign, singing a song in Russian – the sky’s the limit and it’s fun to just scroll through the various posted jobs to see what zany things people are willing to do.

5. Online surveys – research companies are always looking for people to fill out surveys and test new products. According to Owen Burek, here are some to try:

6. Searching the web – companies pay you to go on certain websites to find information such as Swagbucks and CashCrate

7. Review music for money – Here’s Owen Burek again.

If you love music, make it your business by reviewing unsigned bands and artists for cash. I know… we couldn’t believe it either.

It can take a while to build up your reputation but some users of the site have said that they have earned £40 a month. This may not sound like much but if it’s something you enjoy then it shouldn’t be hard work and is another thing for your CV. Money you earn will be in $US but anyone can sign up and review.

To get started, head over to Slicethepie now

So you can see that just sitting in front of your TV or computer screen can benefit you greatly and your spare time can be filled productively. This is especially handy for students, people who have suddenly lost a job or even for retiring folks with some free hours. They can all make money from home.

However, all of these methods will bring in some money for you but not six figures, not a fortune. After all, if you are making $85/month reviewing music or making $5 per order on Fiverr, will this really pay the bills? I’d like you to look into a more reliable source of money you can make online without a lot of telephoning or bothering your friends or family. It’s called Home Business Labs. Want to know more? Just watch this video and then you will see what I mean. It’s a revolution in home businesses and online marketing.
http://hangouts.homebusinesslabs.com/topsecret/?id=4974821

Amazon is known for its rapid delivery. Amazon Prime (first month is free) means you will get your package in less than 3 days. Now they want to be able to deliver small packages to addresses within a radius of 10 miles from one of their numerous supply depots in a few hours from the time of the order placement. The service will be called Amazon Prime Air.

While they have been testing drones (small mechanical flying machines) since 2013, according to Wikipedia, they are getting closer to using them now. It seems the US has not given Amazon permission to test them, so now Amazon has moved to British Columbia. The location is secret for several reasons. They don’t want their competitors to see what they are doing, they don’t want people “capturing” the drones, and they don’t want any collisions with people, cars, animals. Have you ever seen a drone? Take a few minutes to watch this video.

I wonder if this will ever be safe. However, Amazon points out that there is a segment of air space above buildings and below where commercial airliner traffic is. Seems to me these drones will have to be equipped with collision avoidance technology. What about those little boys that might want to take one home? Looks like a toy to me. Well, if any company can accomplish this it will be Amazon. Online shopping will never be the same again. I wonder how I will return packages that are the wrong color, size or are broken? Will we be calling the drones like we call a taxi now?

You may hear people say they don’t “bother” with any of the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin or Pinterest. They will tell you that these are just for people posting cute pictures of their kids or funny cats. Social media platforms are not serious places for advertising or even posting informational articles or blogs.

Let’s look at some recent statistics to see if this opinion is true. First, here are some figures on the number of users from year 2010 as projected into year 2018 in billions.

OK. You can see that there are lots online users of social media, but are they buying? Can we find useful, informative, educational material using social media? Here is one of the online marketing gurus, Jay Baer, has to say about this.

As Jay says, “Content is fire. Social media is gasoline.” It’s a different approach to help customers, not just preach to them. Companies have to get faster, smarter and more social through their advertisements. The people are there on the home screens. It’s now up to the companies to tap into that gold mine of ready customers.

Let’s now look at online sales to access whether these people are ready to buy. Here’s the information from Metrics.com, a good website to view with lots of very pertinent articles about internet marketing. Online spending in Australia is projected to increase by about $10 billion in the next 5 years. Online shoppers in Africa are 30% of the population due to the spread of mobile phones and faster internet connections. South Africa now has a rate of 51% of internet users who shop online.

In the US the total for 2014 was $248.7 billion for online sales with a 10% increase forecast for the next 5 years , according to Forrester Research. In Western Europe, 2014 saw online sales totaling 14 billion Euros ($155.7) with a growth projection of 11% annually. Asia with China becoming a world financial power spent $525.2 billion in 2014, more than the US (almost double), according to emarketer.com

Not too many years ago most people shopped in their local stores complete with parking and weather problems, long lines, and wobbly shopping carts. Even when online shopping was available, people felt uncomfortable using their credit cards and giving their personal information to cyber-shops. That has all changed. Read more here.

One of the areas that has lagged behind is big ticket sales. Most of the online sales are smaller items that can easily and quickly be delivered. However, there is a great sales potential possible (and a very lucrative one) if companies can figure out the logistics of delivery and possible returns. Now that people are more comfortable with shopping online, here is another area to pursue.

I personally go to a store, find out what I want (size and model number), then go home and shop online with my shopping network, Dubli.com that will give me cash back savings, one of the best online business ideas. I guess you would call me a hybrid online shopper. Soon there will be stats on the use of social media sites for shopping as this is now starting big time.

If you share other people’s videos and articles, is that stealing? Certainly not if you are giving them credit. This type of sharing of inspirational stories has been going on since the printing press was invented (maybe even earlier), but we just called it quotations or references. Who can write a research paper without those?

When it comes to videos, the originator of the video actually receives a higher ranking every time someone shares his/her video. In this video, Randy from My Inspired Media and Home Business Labs describes all the advantages to sharing content.

Do you know of inspirational stories that you would like to share?

What video would you like me to share, especially from MyInspiredMedia? Let me know by commenting below. Stay tuned for the next in this series to help you find a profitable online home based business.

It’s enough to worry about hackers stealing credit card numbers, although most sites have strong protection in place to prevent that now. However, the thieves might be living in your own house. Games in particular encourage kids to play more and thus order more. Think your kids are too young to figure out how to purchase online? Think again.

According to Quentin Fottrell writing for MarketWatch.com, some companies are now setting up sales so that every credit card user must enter the password for the card before the purchase is final. Hopefully this will curtail the thousands of dollars of “youth-purchased” goods that the companies will not refund.

Similar cases and research into children’s online gaming habits indicate that minors are spending more time (and money) on mobile devices. Last year, Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.11% agreed to refund customers a minimum of $32.5 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint that the company billed for millions of dollars of charges incurred by kids’ mobile apps without parental consent.

It is certainly true that the children don’t have a clue how much they are spending. It seems to me that there should be a limit put on purchases made at one time, if not by the online company at least by the credit card company.

How do these children get access to the credit cards? While everyone is careful with ID and car keys when they are out of the house, leaving a purse or jacket around the house is a common phenomena. Mom and Dad are sleeping in – you get the idea. Kids have watched their parents shop with cards. It’s tempting to try to shop online – like another game.

So now you have been warned. We like you to shop online, but just remember to keep close watch on those cards. Likewise, it’s time to teach children what adult things they can and can’t use. Why not make it onto a game, like Disney’s “The Great Piggy Bank Adventure” which teaches children about finances? Here is an iTunes downloadable version.